Pearl Lens Projector

Pearl lens tester was the industry standard lens tester in photo and cinema industry. Modern photography lab had one, Vivitar, Canon, and Canon repair facilities in US all had one of these. Later on, Chosziel offered one for the Cine industry. The Pearl projector works with a 1000W lamp, and a precise focusing stage, and interchangeable lens mounts. The target is chrome on glass precision target with 16 mm, Super 35, full frame cinema formats. The condenser could even handle up to the 6x6 Hasselblad format. The most critical stage of lens testing is focusing it. With Pearl, you'll need a spotting scope, or binoculars to see the image up close on the screen. Modern projectors like Chrosziel offer motorized focusing which is so useful.

Testing lenses with Pearl projector shows lens resolution directly readable in lines per millimeters. The lens flange distance (different for each camera) is dialed in the projector, and the lens is set to the screen distance by its graduated scale. The infinity focus is checked with the autocollimator.

Test Lens

Projector

Spotting Scope

Tape Measure

Binoculars

Lens Mount

Lens projector setup with scope to see the projected target for focusing.

That's what motorized remote focusing is for!

Compact Primes with PL mount under projection test

Projection image for Zeiss Compact Prime 35 mm T2

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June-Sep 2017 issue of Optomechanix: